Discretionary Spending
Function 050 - National Defense
Reduce the Department of Defense’s Budget
CBO periodically issues a compendium of policy options (called Options for Reducing the Deficit) covering a broad range of issues, as well as separate reports that include options for changing federal tax and spending policies in particular areas. This option appears in one of those publications. The options are derived from many sources and reflect a range of possibilities. For each option, CBO presents an estimate of its effects on the budget but makes no recommendations. Inclusion or exclusion of any particular option does not imply an endorsement or rejection by CBO.
| Billions of Dollars | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | 2027 | 2028 | 2029 | 2030 | 2021– 2025 |
2021– 2030 |
|
| Reduce DoD’s Budget by 10 Percent Relative to the Amount Planned for 2024 | |||||||||||||
| Change in Planned Defense Spending | |||||||||||||
| Budget authority | 0 | -24 | -49 | -75 | -70 | -87 | -95 | -98 | -93 | -96 | -218 | -687 | |
| Outlays | 0 | -14 | -34 | -57 | -64 | -76 | -86 | -92 | -91 | -93 | -169 | -607 | |
| Reduce DoD’s Budget by 5 Percent Relative to the Amount Planned for 2024 | |||||||||||||
| Change in Planned Defense Spending | |||||||||||||
| Budget authority | 0 | -12 | -25 | -37 | -31 | -47 | -54 | -55 | -50 | -50 | -105 | -361 | |
| Outlays | 0 | -7 | -17 | -28 | -29 | -39 | -47 | -51 | -50 | -49 | -81 | -317 | |
This option would take effect in October 2021.
Estimates of savings displayed in the table are based on the Department of Defense’s 2021 Future Years Defense Program and the Congressional Budget Office’s extension of that plan.
DoD = Department of Defense.
According to its Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) for 2021, the Department of Defense (DoD) anticipates that its budget will average about $735 billion per year through 2025.
This option includes two alternative decreases in DoD’s budget. The first would reduce DoD’s budget over three years so that funding in 2024 would be 10 percent less than the funding planned for that year in the Administration’s 2021 FYDP. The second would reduce DoD’s budget by 5 percent over that same period. Both alternatives would allow for real (inflation-adjusted) growth of 1 percent annually after 2024.